


Happily Ever After

by Tenukii



Category: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Dorks in Love, Happy Ending, M/M, POV First Person, Romantic Fluff, Sappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 19:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17710523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenukii/pseuds/Tenukii
Summary: Llewyn and Al each recount how they ended up together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These two chapters are brief stories I wrote for the profiles of my Subeta pets based on Llewyn and Al. Basically a summary of "Fresh Start" but with a couple new themes. I'm sorry I have this obsessive need to archive everything I write.

So, I’m Llewyn.

That’s one word, L-L-E-W-Y-N.  It’s Welsh, because my dad’s family was Welsh.  (Mom was Italian.  I’m from New York City, where everyone’s from somewhere else.)  “Llewyn” means. . . well, I’m not really sure what it means.  But “Llew” means light, and there’s a hero from Welsh mythology named Lleu Llaw Gyffes, so there’s that.  He had rotten luck: his mother didn’t want him, then his wife cheated on him and tried to kill him. 

I know all about rotten luck.  You know how they say, “There’s always someone worse off”?  Well, I’m that person. . . or I used to be.  It’s not like I didn’t _try_ to do the right thing, most of the time.  It’s just that every time I made a choice, it turned out to be the _wrong_ choice.  I mean, yeah, I’m a jerk, I get it.  I fully admit it.  I’m abrasive and grouchy and selfish and whatever other adjectives you wanna throw at me.  But I’d be nicer if people were nicer to _me_ , and if the world wasn’t dead set against me.

This girl I know said I’m like King Midas’s brother: everything I touch turns to—uh, crap.  That wasn’t the word she used, but it’ll do.

Anyway.  I’m a musician.  Folk music, specifically, and most of my friends are folk musicians too.  That may be one of the reasons my luck is so bad.  I mean, yeah, it’s the sixties, folk music’s hot—but folk _musicians_ , we go with the flow, right?  We aren’t, uh, responsible.  And I guess I’m the least responsible of the irresponsible.  The one who had one-night stands instead of relationships, the one who never worried about consequences.  The one who was always scrambling to fix the damage those consequences caused.

And that’s how I met Al Cody.

* * *

I need money, and so does he, so we both end up in a mutual friend’s recording session, singing backup for him.  (Said mutual friend happens to be the husband of Ms. King Midas, who happens to be the reason I needed money in the first place, but that’s not the point.)  So I come in the studio where Jim—that’s the mutual friend—is recording this stupid novelty song he wrote, and there’s this guy with him.  Looks like a cowboy holding a guitar, a cowboy who’s too tall for the stool he’s folded up on.  Jim tells me his name’s Al Cody.  (It’s not, actually, but I didn’t find that out until later.)

Al’s pretty dorky looking, and even dorkier sounding when we start singing.  His voice is deep, real deep, and Jim has him doing all the dumb sound effects in his dumb song.  But it might be a nice voice singing something else, like Al might be nice looking if his nose and mouth weren’t so big, and he wasn’t so lanky and awkward, and he didn’t wear a stupid _cowboy hat_ all the time.

Later, though, I saw the cover of the solo album Al recorded and couldn’t sell, and he wasn’t wearing the hat there, and his ears are even bigger and dorkier looking than his nose is, so it turns out he actually looks _better_ in the hat.  Anyway, so Al’s a dork, but he’s all right, and I’ve worn out my welcome everywhere else, so I end up crashing on his couch for a couple nights.

And this weird thing happens.  I learn more about him, like what a nice guy he is, too nice for his own good, really.  Not only do I start realizing Al’s nice, I start realizing he’s not so bad looking after all.  He’s got these sexy dark eyes, and his mouth is so expressive even though it’s big, and he’s skinny but he’s muscular too.  By the time he kicks me out—well, okay, he didn’t actually kick me out because he’s too nice for that, but I could tell he wanted me to leave—by the time I leave, I like Al Cody, a lot.  (Although by then I’d found out his name is really Arthur Milgrum, and he’s Jewish and comes from New Jersey, and he's pretty much living a lie.)

But everything I touch turns to crap, remember?  So even though I like Al, I leave without putting up a fight, because I don’t want him to end up sick of me like everyone does, sooner or later.  I’m pretty sure I won’t ever see him again, unless I run into him by accident or something.

Things don’t turn out that way, though.  I have to go back to Al’s place a few days later, because I get into some trouble—okay, so I get beat up, and I don't have anywhere else to go.  And Al takes me in, ‘cos like I said he’s too nice for his own good. . . and something happens.  Those couple of days I'm there and Al takes care of me, I guess I kind of fall for him.  I’d fooled around with guys before, a few times, so that isn't what surprises me.  The surprising thing is that I really care about him, and when I leave again, I miss him.  I miss him bad.

But I stay away for a year, this time, because I go back in the Merchant Marines. That's what I did before the whole musician thing.  It’s what my dad did too, and I disappointed him when I didn't stick with it. But I go back in ‘cos I'm pretty much out of options.  No money left, nowhere else to go, and I'm afraid Al will end up hating me if I stick around.

Still, I miss him the whole time I'm gone, and when I get back, I track Al down.  He's moved into a pretty nice house and gotten a real job by now.  I thought sure he wouldn’t even let me in, much less let me stick around.  But he does.  I don't plan on staying long, but I do.

I never thought I’d really fall in love, but I do.

* * *

That was 1962.  We got married earlier this year, 1964—it’s not legal, of course, but we said the vows and had witnesses and all. Far as I’m concerned, we’re married and no one can tell us any different.  And remember what I said about consequences, and one-night stands?  Turns out one of those consequences is named Maria.  She was born in 1959, but I didn’t know about her until 1961.  I didn’t meet her until a few months after Al and I tied the knot.  Maria’s mother had died, and in her will, she said she wanted me to raise the daughter I’d never met.  So Maria came to live with Al and me, and the two of them are the best consequences that ever happened to me.

Last night, Maria wanted Daddy (me) to tell her a bedtime story.  Papa (Al) tells better stories. (And Papa’s the one who bought her the cowgirl hat she begs to wear to bed every night, so I’m completely fine with Papa also being the one who puts her to bed and has to tell her she can't.)  But last night, she wanted me to tell her one instead, so I told her the myth about Lleu Llaw Gyffes.  I know, sounds like a pretty depressing bedtime story, and I did leave out some of the darker parts, but it has a happy ending: Lleu gets to be king in the end, even after everything he went through.

So later I kept thinking about that, how Lleu had such rotten luck but eventually things got better for him.  I guess that’s what happened to me.  I used to think I’d always turn everything to crap, that I’d only ever live the first part of Lleu’s story.  I’m still pretty abrasive and grouchy and selfish, but I’m not as bad as I used to be.  Not since I found someone who was good to me even when I didn’t deserve it, and he made me want to be good to him, too.  Before, I’d always made bad choices, but I finally starting choosing right when I chose Al.

I got a happy ending just like Lleu, except being with my husband and our daughter is way better than being a king, Midas or otherwise.  And I’m doing everything I can to make sure the three of us live happily ever after.


	2. Chapter 2

I always wanted to be a cowboy.

Everyone thought it was cute when I was a little kid. I mean, every boy wants to be a cowboy at some point, right? They didn't think it was so cute, though, when I never grew out of it. My dad said wanting to be a cowboy was fine for boys who grew up out in Texas or Arizona or something, but not for guys who'd never lived beyond the mid Atlantic. Particularly not for guys named Arthur Milgrum from Short Hills, New Jersey, who'd finished college and had a family business to take over. My mom wasn't so politic about it, especially when I got an apartment over in New York City and started calling myself Al Cody and tried to make a career of playing western folk music instead of taking over that family business.

It all started because I saw so many westerns when I was a kid, growing up in the thirties. I guess we had it better during the Depression than a lot of families did, but we didn't have it great, either. I don't remember a whole lot about it—I was really young after all—but I know we went to the movies pretty often. Lots of people did when they could afford it, kinda to escape their real lives, maybe. Anyway, my dad's always liked westerns, 'cos before he got married he was sort of a rogue. I think he enjoyed watching the westerns and pretending he was free again, out there like the cowboys played by John Wayne or Robert Livingston or Johnny Mack Brown (except my dad never was good at sports). His favorite westerns were the traditional ones, the dramas with maybe a little romance if the girl was a feisty type like Maureen O'Hara. (Mom's feisty. She's got feist to spare, in fact.)

But me, I liked the singing cowboy movies. I  _still_  like the singing cowboy movies. I know they're hokey and silly and everything else—my dad never got tired of telling me that, and neither does Llewyn. . . but I’ll get to Llewyn in a minute.  And maybe those movies _are_ silly, but they’re also happy, and we needed happy back then.  I think we still need happy now, thirty years later. Of course I _like_ the traditional westerns and I admire John Wayne, who doesn't, but I love Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter the most. When I was a kid, I'd watch those guys and pretend I was them, out there and free just like my dad did, but I pretended I was singing and playing the guitar too, making people happy. I didn't care much about the romance part of the story, just the singing part. The singing, and the saving the day, and the making people happy.

Then in the forties, the war came, and the Depression ended, and things got better or worse depending on who you were and who you asked. We still went to the movies as a family the first couple years, until about the time the war ended, but after that, I went by myself.  Sometimes with my friends, every now and then with a date, but mostly by myself.  Part of the reason I quit going with my family was because Dad started spending less and less time at home, but of course, I was growing up, too. Teenagers don't like going to the movies with their parents much. I kept seeing the cowboy movies, though, and I still loved the singing ones the best.

Those were my favorites all the way into the mid-fifties while I finished growing up, and finished college, and they finished making movies with singing cowboys.  There were still lots of westerns coming out, but more and more, they were B movies.  I still liked ‘em, but they weren’t quite the same.  Nobody would see them with me either.  Everybody was real tired of my cowboy thing by then, but I don’t like giving up, especially not on a dream.  So near the end of 1959, I moved into a dumpy apartment on Downing Street in New York City, started going by Al Cody, and tried to make it as a western folk musician. That was the closest I could get to becoming a singing cowboy, since I'm really a Jewish guy on the East coast in the second half of the twentieth century.

My parents hated it, especially my mom.  She hated that I changed my name, even when I tried to explain I didn’t change it because I was ashamed of people knowing I was Jewish.  I changed it because “Arthur Milgrum” just sounds like an accountant or something while “Al Cody” sounds like a cowboy, but she wouldn’t listen.  She hated the way I started talking and told me people were going to think I was ignorant because I used words like “ain’t.”  She hated that I lived in a tiny apartment and that I started smoking, and most of all, she hated the music.

I actually recorded a solo album (it didn’t sell), and I gave my parents a copy.  They didn’t say it was bad or anything, and I think Dad even kinda liked it, but Mom made sure I knew exactly how much time and money I had wasted so far on my silly dream of being a cowboy musician, and how much _more_ time and money I was gonna waste if I kept on with it.  I didn’t argue with her.  I’ve never won an argument with Mom in my life, and anyway, I knew she was probably right.  But like I said, I don’t like giving up, so I stayed in the apartment and kept playing gigs when I could get them, and that’s how I met Llewyn Davis.

That day in ‘61, I was in a recording studio again, but this time, I was doing backup vocals for a buddy of mine on a novelty song he wrote.  It’s a silly song, but I guess you’ve figured out by now, I like silly.  While we were warming up, another friend of my buddy’s came in to help out too.  That friend was Llewyn.  He was short and kind of rumpled and grouchy and really cute, and when he asked if he could spend a couple nights at my apartment on my couch, I couldn’t tell him no.  I always tried to be helpful and nice to everybody, and like I said, he was _really_ cute.

Llewyn was a jerk—not just to me, to everybody.  He thought our mutual friend’s song was ridiculous, and he mooched off all his other friends until no one would take him in anymore, and eventually he ran his mouth so much he ended up getting pummeled in a fist fight.  As for me, Llewyn said I was so tall and thin, I’d disappear if I turned sideways.  He said he hated my cowboy hat and the only good thing about it was that it covered up how big my ears are.  He said the first time he heard me sing, I sounded like a cow.

But there was something about Llewyn that made me feel like the cowboy I’d always wanted to be.  When we sang, we sounded good together.  I only sounded like a cow on that one song, and it turned out that Llewyn liked my voice otherwise.  I didn’t really mind giving him a place to stay as long as he helped out some, and he started doing that the second time he came around, after he got in that fight and I patched him up.  And I found out that he kind of liked me being tall and thin, and he even kind of liked my ears.  (He really _didn’t_ like the cowboy hat, and he still doesn’t, but that’s just too bad.)  All in all, Llewyn liked being with me because I cheered him up, and not many people could do that anymore.

So being with Llewyn made me feel like singing, and saving the day, and making him happy.  And even though I never cared much about romance in the movies, I fell in love with him.  I fell hard.  If I had been John Wayne, Llewyn would have been my Maureen O’Hara, as feisty as they come.  But I wasn’t really a cowboy, no matter how much I wanted to be, and I wasn’t a movie star either.  I don’t like giving up on my dreams, but a “happily ever after” with another guy, and a guy like Llewyn at that?  How could _that_ dream ever come true?

Well, what the movies don’t tell you is that sometimes, you compromise. . . you learn how to balance your dreams.  I figured that out once the impossible happened: once Llewyn fell in love with me too, I decided I’d do whatever it took to make it work.  So I compromised.  I gave up part of the cowboy thing, in the end.  Like, I got a regular job—I’m not an accountant, but I do work in an office where they call me Arthur, not Al.  But when I go out and perform with Llewyn, I go by Al Cody, and I wear my cowboy hat, no matter how much he complains.  Besides, our daughter Maria loves my hat so much, I bought her a cowgirl hat all her own, and now she wants to be a singing cowgirl when she grows up (and an artist, and maybe a princess to boot).  I think I can safely say I’ve won the hat argument now that I’ve gotten our kid to take my side.

Sometimes they show the old singing cowboy westerns on TV, and Llewyn never fails to tell me how silly they are, but he sits and watches them with me anyway.  I sing for him; and when he’s had a bad day, I save it for him; and I do my best to make him happy.  He does all those things for me too, and we both do everything we can to give our little girl the best life possible.  So I guess you could say I ended up becoming a part-time cowboy—it’s not quite what I imagined while I was sitting in the dark theater all those years ago, but being my family’s hero is a better “happily ever after” than I ever saw in any movie.


End file.
